


played like that

by seeingrightly



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 10:06:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2503916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seeingrightly/pseuds/seeingrightly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey Milkovich is a puzzle. He’s a puzzle, with some of the pieces bent or lost underneath the couch. Or a Rubix cube, only half the stickers are peeling off. Mickey’s a crossword puzzle someone tried to fill in with pen, scribbling over their guesses and trying to squeeze new letters into empty spaces that barely exist. He’s that game – you know, that game with the little blocks you build up and then try to pull apart without knocking the whole thing down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	played like that

**Author's Note:**

> parts vaguely take place during ian's depressive episode at the end of s4.
> 
> title from charlene kaye's "animal love i".

Mickey Milkovich is a puzzle. He’s a puzzle, with some of the pieces bent or lost underneath the couch. Or a Rubix cube, only half the stickers are peeling off. Mickey’s a crossword puzzle someone tried to fill in with pen, scribbling over their guesses and trying to squeeze new letters into empty spaces that barely exist. He’s that game – you know, that game with the little blocks you build up and then try to pull apart without knocking the whole thing down.

Mickey doesn’t play games like those, the kind that make you think, that make you sit down and take your time, the kind that you want to throw against a wall after thirty seconds. Mickey doesn’t like to lose.

-

When Mickey is seven, he plays baseball for a week, and he hates it. He always misses the ball. They tell him he’s doing it wrong. He pisses on first base and he never plays a sport again.

-

The third time Mickey kisses Ian, they’re in public, in that shithole where Ian works. It’s not the third time they’ve kissed, but it’s the third time Mickey’s kissed Ian, and they’re in public, but no one even notices. It’s Ian’s fault, this time and the last time and the time before that, it’s always Ian, saying something and pulling and pushing and making Mickey do something he doesn’t want to want to do. It’s always Ian, staring Mickey down like he gets it. Mickey doesn’t know what he gets, or how, but he does.

Ian wants to win, and this time Mickey lets him.

-

When Mickey is nine, Mandy steals their neighbor’s Operation game out of their backyard. Some of the pieces are missing but she makes Mickey play it with her anyway, bribing him with microwaved pizza bagels. They taste better made in the oven but neither of them knows how all the knobs work and Mandy’d burned her hand the last time she tried to make something when she was home alone. They sit on the floor in Mandy’s room on either side of the little board and Mandy picks up the tweezers and she fucks up right away, tapping the rim of the arm hole she pokes into and causing the thing to buzz obnoxiously.

“Jesus,” Mickey says, pretending to be annoyed, like it didn’t make him jump.

“Your turn,” Mandy growls, and Mickey takes the little tweezers between clumsy fingers and pokes them into a knee and he feels them bump up against the little plastic part inside for just a second and then he hits the rim too, and it screeches, and then someone outside Mandy’s door yells and she shoves everything back into the box and puts it under her bed.

-

The second time Mickey kisses Ian, well, maybe it doesn’t count, maybe Ian kisses him, but in this case it kind of feels like it’s the thought that counts or some shit. Mickey kisses Ian because he’s getting married, because Ian wants to leave, because Ian wants to stay, because Mickey’s been coming apart at the seams for weeks and this is the stitching.

Ian thinks he did it, after. He thinks he slid everything into place, dug every last piece out from under the couch, filled in every last square. He doesn’t know he’s the last piece holding up the tower.  He doesn’t know he hasn’t solved it at all.

Mickey wobbles. Mickey kinda feels like he’s winning even though he knows he’s losing. Mickey won’t be fucking solved that easily.

-

When Mickey is sixteen, Mandy steals his sweatshirt and he looks all over her room for it, and when he digs under the bed he finds Operation all covered in dust, and no one’s home and he’s high and he sits there on Mandy’s floor and he plays it. He plays it until the buzzing sound doesn’t make him flinch, until he barely even hears it. He plays it, his fingers unsteady and losing, losing, losing, screech, screech, screech. He’s good at tuning out sounds like that.

-

The first time Mickey kisses Ian, he knows it’s a game and Ian knows it’s a game and Mickey loses, but he kinda feels like he wins.

-

When Mickey is eighteen, he and Mandy are cleaning the house to get rid of shit they don’t want near Ian or the baby, and they find Operation again. They’re tired and worried and sitting on Mandy’s floor and the game flops out of the deteriorating cardboard box between them, and it’s only a few seconds before Mickey moves everything into place, and Mandy doesn’t say anything. She watches Mickey pick up the tweezers. His hands have been shaky for days, and the house is quiet, and he doesn’t flinch when the buzzer goes off. He fucks up and he fucks up, and after a minute, Mandy gets up and leaves.

Mickey sets the game up again, and he plays again, and he doesn’t hear the buzzer, and he doesn’t hear when the baby starts to cry. His hands shake and shake and fall into a rhythm, his eyes unfocused.

Someone shouts in the hallway, and Mickey startles. He looks down at the board.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and he reaches down again and this time, somehow, even though he does doesn’t know what he did differently, this time he does it.

He jumps when the sound doesn’t happen, and he drops the little white piece on the board. For a long, stupid, unfocused second, he assumes it’ll be the heart, but when he looks closer it’s shaped like a tiny horse for some fucking reason.

-

The fourth time Mickey kisses Ian, he walks into their room holding the stupid little horse and he sees Ian sitting up in bed. He looks grimy and dazed but he’s sitting up.

“I won,” Mickey says.

Ian turns to look at him as he sits down on the bed, looks like he’s considering asking Mickey what the fuck he’s talking about, looks like he’s been asleep for days.

“Fuck,” Mickey says, and he drops the horse somewhere and puts his hands on either side of Ian’s face.

He stays there for a second and he thinks his hands are never going to stop shaking and he puts his lips on Ian’s gross hair and he laughs a little. Ian brings one hand up and wraps it loosely around Mickey’s wrist, and Mickey feels like Jenga in reverse, like everything’s being put back into place, slowly and one at a time and nearly knocking everything over.

-

Mickey Milkovich is eighteen, and he’s ready to be solved.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [professorwolfjwolf](professorwolfjwolf.tumblr.com).


End file.
